Three years ago, Firefox 3 set the record for most downloads in a 24-hour period, cracking 8 million and positioning itself as a viable alternative to Internet Explorer.
Firefox 4 released today to the public at large after 12 public betas, two release candidates, and nearly a year of development, faces a hugely different landscape. Microsoft’s Internet Explorer remains the dominant browser. And in less than three years, a significant chunk of the browser market has taken a shine to relative newcomer Google Chrome.
You can get Firefox 4 here.
Click here to see the download tracker.
According to a review I saw, they’ve finally fixed a persistent memory leak that had long plagued Firefox. I’ve seen FF3 taking up nearly a full GB of RAM after long sessions on my machine, and the only cure was to restart Firefox. If that’s finally fixed, it’s a plus, but I won’t give them any extra points for fixing old buggy code.
But finally Firefox 4 plays HTML5 video, and this is actually good for iPhone and iPad users even if they never use Firefox. This latest version will further facilitate the transition on the web from Flash to HTML5 video, growing the amount of video that’s available to Apple iUsers, and they can become even more smug than before (if that’s possible).
A smug iUser is a happy iUser
I’ll miss one plugin until it’s updated — BBCode. I used it all the time.
Got it. Like it.
My Google-free system runs great.
If I encounter any problems, I am sure I can overcome them. Firefox versions get pretty well Beta tested before a new release hits the ‘net.
Yes, me too 1873 Colt, I’m Google free and at peace.
Piece of shit doesn’t seem to want to give me seperate stop and reload buttons. Off to find a painless way to downgrade back to 3.
Can anyone confirm or deny that the version 3 GUI is still available and usable? The new one looks too much like Chrome and is non-intuitive to me.
They finally added Paste & Go.
I use Gogoduck because the duck is cute. I think it is Bing in disguise, but ignorance is bliss.
Google’s motto, “Do no evil” is ominous. Why would they even think it necessary to say that……..?
From a customizing standpoint it seems very buggy. 3 attempts to install an adon that restores a feature they removed. I guess that’s why they make the big bucks. Not quite time to switch to ie9 or chrome but close.
It feels slightly faster than Chrome to me, but that could just be trickery.
I prefer the add ons available for FF, but am sad to say I now much prefer the look of Chrome. I hate the auto-updates of Chrome, and that it chokes on animated gifs.
I just get a bad feeling using Chrome, not enough to ever use Safari though. Google already knows enough about me without using their browser.